Typhoon Fung Wong Follow UP
Well, the typhoon is pretty much over, although we’ve still got some rain falling today. This typhoon was much stronger than Kalmaegi, which killed 20 people last week, yet so far only 2 deaths have been reported for this one. I think the preparation level was much higher this time around, as Kalmaegi was not predicted to do much damage and was perhaps taken lightly by everyone.
There wasn’t a lot of damage in the Taipei area, but man, did we get a lot of rain! My dog pen behind the house ( a covered area between our house and retaining wall where I keep our two dogs) had about 5 inches of standing water in it, and I ended up putting the dogs in the house for most of Monday. The record for this storm was at Tai Ping Mt. on the east coast, which ended up with a total of 32 inches from Sunday – Monday afternoon. Other areas had between 15 – 20 inches of rain on average. The quickest accumulation was a city on the western plains in Chia Yi county, which had 3 1/2 inches of rain in 1 hour yesterday. Imagine what that would do to the Magic Valley!!
Overall, I guess we were pretty lucky this time, but we’re likely to get 3 – 4 more before the end of our typhoon season (October), so we’ll keep our fingers crossed.
July 29th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Mike Says:
What’s the effect of this kind of rain on tea crops?
July 30th, 2008 at 12:08 am
teaguy Says:
Hey, Mike! When are we going to drink some tea??
That’s a good question, by the way. I believe that once tea trees are well-rooted, most of the water runs off in mountain areas. Lower elevation fields may flood, but I haven’t seen lasting damage to the plants themselves. Wind damage is probably a bigger concern, because a lot of leaf can be blown off the bushes. I’m not sure what effect the rain has on the quality, but I’ll investigate that question this week. Nice to hear from you!